Restaurant review: Butterfly Chinese and Japanese Restaurant in Hadley

The Butterfly Chinese and Japanese Restaurant in HadleyThe Republican, Dave Roback

Asian restaurants across the Pioneer Valley are in the midst of their Chinese New Year's celebration, welcoming in the Year of the Snake. One option for such New Year's revelry is Butterfly Chinese and Japanese Restaurant in Hadley.

Butterfly's a visually appealing space in which contemporary design and Asian bric-a-brac happily co-exist. Two separate dining areas, one of which houses a sushi bar, offer a variety of seating options.

The menu at Butterfly focuses on the cuisines of China and Japan.

Japanese cuisine is represented by an extensive assortment of sushi selections -- hand rolls like California Roll and Boston Maki (both $4.50); vegetable rolls such as Sweet Potato Roll ($4.25); and an array of sushi and sashimi options.

Chinese choices at Butterfly range from whimsically named specialties such as Creaky Chicken ($11.95) and Happy Family ($14.95) to classics such as Peking Duck ($15.95).

Other selections available include Hunan Pork ($9.95), Chicken with Spicy Tea Sauce ($10.95), Sliced Beef with Scallions ($10.95), and Shrimp with Broccoli ($11.95).

It being Chinese New Year, we focused solely on food from the Chinese tradition.
Wonton Soup ($1.75) is one of those everybody-serves-it dishes that are useful benchmarks against which to measure a kitchen's skill.

The version Butterfly serves made the grade. The broth, an underpinning of any soup experience, had a fully developed, almost toasty chicken character. Strips of red-cooked pork, Chinese cabbage, and scallion rings added substance and crunch.

As for the wontons themselves, we found them slightly overcooked, although their meat filling had a hearty flavor we appreciated.

Our second starter, Home Style Dumplings ($5.50), offered plenty to recommend them. A savory, slightly spicy pork mixture filled each of the half-moon packets, and the dough from which the dumplings had been fashioned was thinner and less chewy than we've had elsewhere.

Served with a soy-based dipping sauce, they were one of the highlights of our dinner.

A perennial favorite of ours, Ginger Chicken with String Beans ($11.95) had a light, almost delicate presence. Instead of a heavy brown master sauce, the kitchen compounded a less intense glaze that captured the essence of ginger without falling victim to excessive sweetness.

Thin cutlets of fresh-tasting chicken and crisp-tender green beans constituted the balance of the dish, with thin matchsticks of fresh ginger adding an occasional flavor sparkle.

A delicate sauce was also the hallmark of the second main dish, Scallops with Garlic Sauce ($11.95), we tried. Almost broth-like, the sauce had a pleasingly briny character, with just enough garlic and chili pepper heat to make things interesting.

A panoply of vegetables -- broccoli, baby corn, bell pepper, bamboo shoots, and the like -- were included, but the number of scallops slices present seem inadequate.

Though a choice of white or brown rice is available with dinners at Butterfly, we opted to experience an order of House Special Fried Rice ($7.25).

Likes? Plenty of red-cooked pork, egg shreds, and other goodies were part of the stir-fry, lending it color and textural interest.

Dislike? A lingering cabbage flavor that ever so slightly diminished our enjoyment of what otherwise could have been a fine dish.

Butterfly is fully licensed and thus offers all the quirky Polynesian cocktails that are part of the Asian restaurant scheme of things. Beers and a small selection of wine are also available.

As is customary, the bill of fare at Butterfly promotes a number of lunch and dinner combination platters.

The restaurant has a gourmet menu available for those craving taste bud adventures like Ham with Winter Melon ($7.95) and Pork-stuffed Tofu ($11.95); Hong Kong-style dim sum is served every Saturday and Sunday until 3 p.m.